J. Karen Parker » Triathlon

Water-ful long weekend

karen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:38:37 +0000

Much of my Canada Day long weekend was spent competing in fun sporting activities that gave me the opportunity to enjoy some wonderful Vancouver area lakes.

I did a triathlon at Whonnock Lake on Sunday that included an 800m swim. I’d never been to the area before and was pleasantly surprised with the lovely lake and beach area. I was also pleasantly surprised by the water temperature: It was a balmy 18 degrees, so I opted not to wear my wetsuit. Transitioning from the swim to the bike was a breeze since I didn’t have to spend any time struggling to de-suit!

Then, on Canada Day I did an open water swim at Sasamat Lake. The extremely hot weather we’d had over the weekend made the water even warmer there (21 degrees!) and I again went sans-wetsuit. My time for the race was definitely a bit slower without the extra buoyancy – I’d never swum that far in open water without a wetsuit before and didn’t realize how much harder it would be – but the cool lake water felt great on such a hot day.

I took a quick nap at home after the swim, then Dan and I decided to take advantage of 2-for-1 Tuesday at Ecomarine Kayaks; On Tuesdays you can rent two single kayaks for $34 plus tax. They’ve got a rental place at English Bay, just steps from our apartment, but in our year of living in the neighbourhood we had yet to check it out.

The rental was for two hours, and we spent that time paddling out past Third Beach, then back to Granville Island, and finally returning to English Bay. Because it was a holiday there was a lot of boat traffic on the water and it was a bit choppy. One powerboat full of idiots decided it would be absolutely hilarious to zoom around us doing donuts! We still had a great time, though, and have made a reservation for next Tuesday evening when the water should be much calmer and relatively powerboat-free.

2008 UBC Triathlon

karen — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:13:21 +0000

Despite an almost complete lack of training so far this year, I (foolishly, you might say) decided to enter the UBC Triathlon over the weekend. This event started my interest in triathlon back in 2006 when a friend talked me into entering the short course. These days I usually enter sprint distance triathlons (800m swim, 20k cycle, 5k run) but given my current state of fitness I thought it wiser to try the short course again this year (400m swim, 10k bike, 5k run).

On Sunday afternoon I left my downtown apartment in plenty of time to arrive at UBC for my 3:30pm swim start, or so I thought. After a harrowingly long bus trip (1.5 hours to get from Davie & Burrard to UBC! Thank you Translink!), I arrived with just under an hour to spare before my race. That sounds like a lot of time, but I had to pick up my registration package, have my bike and helmet checked out for safety, get my gear set up in the transition area, and get into my swimsuit. Luckily, I made it with 20 minutes to spare. And by “spare” I mean work myself up into a nervous tizzy. Maybe I should show up even later next time!

As soon as the swim started, though, my nerves vanished and I had a great race. I certainly wasn’t at my fastest but I had fun. The temperature was great – not too cold on the bike as I had worried – and my run felt relatively strong (considering my lack of training). My goal for Sunday was to beat my short course time from two years ago and I did that by five and a half minutes. I also placed third in my age group, so hooray for turning 30 and moving up an age bracket! If I had been in the 25-29 age group I would have placed 10th. The full results from the triathlon are here.

Completing this race was just the kick in the butt I needed to get in shape for the summer triathlon season. As soon as I’m recovered from the UBC tri (which may take a while, judging by how sore I am today) I’ll start training for my next race: The North Shore Spring Triathlon.

One good thing about turning 30…

karen — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:22:16 +0000

Wyn recently blogged about her Sun Run registration. Our birthdays must be close because I also registered for the Sun Run last week and was horrified when it asked for my “age on the day of the race” and I had to write 30! On the bright side, as Wyn points out, we’ve moved up to the 30-39 age category which means no more competing against speedy young whippersnappers in their early 20′s. This will be especially awesome when triathlon season starts.

Life, in bullet points

karen — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:55:48 +0000

The apartment hunt continues but the hunt for a Wii is over. The Source put me on their backorder list when they couldn’t fill my order a couple weeks ago and they finally came through with one late last week. With any luck I’ll be able to pick it up at Purolater tomorrow evening.
And speaking of new toys… Dan bought me an early birthday present – a Kitchenaid Mixer! I am way more excited about this than the Wii.
On the training front, my IT band injury has flared up again so I haven’t been able to run very much and I’ve used up almost all of my physio coverage for this school year attempting to fix it. I bowed out of both the Steveston Icebreaker 8k in January, and the First Half Marathon in February. I’m still planning to do the UBC Triathlon in a little under two weeks, which should be an interesting experience given how little training I have been doing. I need to hit the pool hard this week and make sure I can still swim 750m and have enough juice left for the bike and run. Yikes.
I turn 29 on Thursday. I’m going to celebrate by eating large amounts of sushi and drinking martinis, and trying not to think about the fact that next year I will be 30 (and still in grad school…)

Fall update

karen — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 04:25:08 +0000

(Maybe one of these days my blog will change more often than the seasons…)

The fall semester is in full swing, and so is my half-marathon clinic. The past month and a half I’ve been splitting my time between puzzling over my algorithms course homework and running all over North Burnaby. Both activities are going reasonably well.
The algorithms course is turning out to be fairly manageable, though I’m using parts of my brain I haven’t used since my third year of undergrad (which further in the past than I care to admit!) and have had to relearn calculus. In other school-related activities, I am hoping to have a first draft of a research plan for my thesis sometime soon. I’ve got a workshop paper on my research topic at a conference in Banff next month and will hopefully be able to get lots of good feedback there.

Running is fun but has been taxing on my body. I’ve spent a small fortune on physio and massage therapy in the past month to deal with some IT band problems. Oh, and I also need orthotics, apparently. Luckily UBC’s student health plan is pretty darn awesome and covers almost 100% of the cost of my orthotics, and 50% of the physio and massage. I haven’t been able to do a lot of the longer runs with my half-marathon clinic group lately, which has been frustrating, but I am slowly recovering and increasing my mileage. It’s just a little over a month until the half-marathon now!

Another 10k?!

karen — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 12:08:08 +0000

Well, 10.8k to be exact. I had planned on doing a considerably shorter distance this weekend, but the Conquer the Point race at UBC was cancelled. So I’ve decided to enter the Do It For Dad race here in Burnaby because: 1) it’s a short bike ride from my house and 2) It doesn’t start until 11am, so I get to sleep in. There’s no minimum pledge amount, so my entry in the race is already secured. However, if you’d like to help me support the British Columbia Foundation for Prostate Disease, you can make online donations here.

Recovering from the 10k

karen — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 19:21:32 +0000

I did my first 10k race ever on Sunday. Running is definitely my least favourite part of triathlon and I don’t train for it nearly as much as I should. In fact, this race was the first time in my life I had ever run 10k! My longest training runs so far have been only 5 or 6k, so needless to say doing the full 10k was a bit of a shock to my legs. My quads were in absolute agony yesterday, and I’m still feeling some pain today. But I met my goal of doing 10k in under an hour! As one of the women at the starting line said, “It’s your first 10k? It doesn’t wmatter what your time is then. Whatever it is it’ll be a personal best!”

Summer Athletics

karen — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 05:44:01 +0000

Here I am after yet another long break from blogging. Hopefully I can manage to stick with it this time. Since you last heard from me I’ve finished my courses at school and gotten involved in way too many extracurricular activities, from school-related committees to more exciting endeavours… like triathlons!

Vancouver is an extremely fit city. Everywhere you look you see joggers, cyclists, and hikers. Somehow, the ultra-fit Vancouver lifestyle must have managed to rub off on me because when my friend Leah asked me to enter the UBC mini triathlon with her in March, I said “ok”! The mini triathlon (400m swim, 10k bike, 5k run) got me hooked and I made a rather limited attempt at training before entering a sprint tri (800m swim, 20k bike, 5k run) over the May long weekend. Despite rainy weather and my lacklustre training record, I had a great time doing the race. I managed to finish it AND I didn’t place last in my age group, so I met my two main goals.
Now I’ve jumped into training a bit more seriously and have got a calendar full of events planned for the summer. I’m even doing a 10k this coming weekend! I’m a pretty awful runner (the swim and bike sections of the triathlon are much more fun in my opinion) so this 10k is going to be a huge challenge for me.

Here’s my summer sporting itinerary:

June 4th – Sandcastle City Classic (10k run)
June 11th – Conquer the Point (5k run)
June 25th – Scotiabank Vancouver 5k (5k run)
July 1st – VOWSA Canada Day Challenge (2k open water swim)
July 22nd – Abbotsford Triathlon (sprint tri)
August 6th – Bridgetown Triathlon (sprint tri)

I saw Wynne’s post about the HBC 10k and was keen to add that to my list as well, but it turns out it’s on the same day as my open water swim. And I’d definitely much rather swim 2k than run 10k.